Skoki!

On Saturday, Keith and Leslie surprised me with overnight reservations at the Skoki Lodge. Skoki is a National Park backcountry lodge with no running water and no electricity that can only be accessed by skiers and snowshoers. The trail starts at Lake Louise, heads up a canyon, crosses two passes and drops into a narrow valley surrounded by hanging glaciers and spectacular peaks. The lodge itself is a historic building built in the 1930s by the Banff ski club.

Five of us skied in for the night - Stuart and Anna - a couple of Brits now living in Banff - my friends Leslie and Keith, and me. I was nervous about going there as a "second-day skier," but my friends assured me that some guests went in on cross-country skis (crazy people, I tell you) so it was probably doable by me on heavy powder gear. The trail turned out to be a nicely packed, gently inclining snowmobile trail that would have been perfect for Pugsley. Thanks to its national park status, Pugsley wouldn't be allowed on that trail; still, I couldn't help but daydream about all the great "pedal turns" I could be making. But I was stuck on skis, so I made the best of it. :-)

Climbing up Deception Pass. The weather was gray with occasional snow flurries, but it wasn't socked in enough to destroy the view.

The trip into Skoki only involved one downhill run long enough to take off the skins, which I was grateful for. Despite my perception that I'm in decent shape, I was feeling exceptionally tired from the day before. I tried to explain to my friends that skiing downhill was a lot more work for me than skinning uphill, even up steep hills, because once that terrain sloped downward, I had to use so much more muscle power to fight gravity. Stuart said, "You know skis are easier if you use them instead of fighting with them." This is probably true, but when a person has two strips of fiberglass, which they can barely control anyway, that are threatening to carry them off the edge of a cornice into icy oblivion, I don't think the person can be blamed for fighting them with every ounce of energy they have. Pugsley may be a beast to push uphill, but at least he has brakes.

Look at that wedge! That's pure technique right there. But I have to admit, once I got going and no longer had time to mull over my certain doom, I actually had a lot of fun.

First tracks! Awkwardly executed. But, hey, you can't beat the scenery.

In the early afternoon we arrived at the lodge, complete with a roaring wood fire and a large spread of snacks. Even though I had already sustained some fairly mean blisters after two days in the hard boots, I also seem to suffer from something my friends call FOMO disease, which is short for "Fear Of Missing Out." So I went out for an afternoon tour. Leslie and I looked for a route to an alpine lake up a side canyon. We stopped at this lightly dusted, boulder-strewn slope for several minutes, considering the dire consequences of my trying to ski down it. We decided to turn around. Now, if I had my snowshoes, I might just have beautiful pictures of a hanging glacier over a frozen alpine lake. Yes, I know skis are more efficient. But not if your trapped in noviceland. Then you can't go anywhere fun.


Well, I guess you can go to Skoki Lodge, which is a fantastically fun place. It's a bit like a classic 1930s Euro ski experience with a bit of Bush Alaska hunting lodge thrown in. Highly recommended by this Banff tourist.

Big first day

Before I came to Banff, I'm not sure I was completely forthcoming about just how little experience I had on skis. That back when I was a snowboarding teenager, two or three times I traded gear with a skier friend for a single run, just for giggles (at each other's expense, of course.) That in 2006, I dabbled in cross-country skiing but had pretty much given it up because I spent more time on my butt and face than I did on my feet. No, when Keith asked me what my level of skiing was, I told him "beginner." I should have said "essentially a first-time beginner whose handful of ski outings only served to convince me that I was incapable of the activity."

Today, we hit Sunshine ski resort first thing in the morning. I was a complete stress case up the first lift of the day, trying to swallow an urge to hyperventilate as Keith calmly explained what we needed to do at the top of the hill. But as I coasted off the lift, much to my amazement, I didn't fall. And to my further amazement, the skis turned when I told them to. I guess it makes sense - skis are just like big extensions of feet. And when I started to think that way, flow just started to happen.

We made four runs on the lift and Keith was a fantastically enthusiastic teacher. He kept yelling out, "I didn't even tell you to do that! And you just did it!" I kept the wedge but started to make tighter turns as the day progressed. I was completely surprised that the skis were allowing me the simple pleasure of surviving down a hill. I've never been anything but a flailing mess on cross-country skis. I'm just not sure what changed. Maybe it's fat skis. Maybe it's edges. Maybe I just wanted it this time. By our fourth run, Keith took me up the intermediate lift, and I was started to forget I was even on skis, with the movement and flow evoking the feeling of being on my board, until I lapsed into a mindset that I was on a board ... which usually resulted in a few seconds of confused terror as I approached a horizon line and tried to lean onto my "back edge" (yeah, leaning back on skis ... not a good idea.)

But the four runs more than served their purpose, so it was time to go touring. We hopped the boundary line, put on skins, and delved into a part of skiing I could really get into: ski walking ... which peacefully carries skiers into beautiful and quiet places.

Here I am skinning toward some fantastically beautiful place. I should note that all of these pictures were taken by Keith, who took my camera because he wanted to document my "first time touring." I really should have just clarified the documentation as my "first time skiing," because it essentially was.

We skinned for about two hours along a ridgeline of the Continental Divide (crossing from Alberta into British Columbia), did a few turns in the powder (resulting in two serious entanglements on my part. That's one advantage of snowboarding over skiing. One piece of gear and it's difficult to get tangled in it.) We took an hour to skin back, floating over the knee-deep postholes left by boot-packing snowboarders (yeah, a skier advantage, for sure.) Then we did a few more lift-served runs. We finally ducked into the lodge at about 4 to sip coffee, dry our skins by the fire, meet up with Leslie and Stuart, and eat pizza and sweet potato fries for dinner.

By 6:30 we were back up on the hill for a "moonlight tour." We skinned up a pitch so steep I'm pretty sure it would have caused my well-worn snowshoes to slide backwards, but the skins held it together, to my amazement. We walked to the top of the lift and the scooted into the backcountry again, working our way though a thin layer of powder up yet another ridgeline. Because I had a mental image of the steep terrain we skinned up, combined with the darkness and weird depth perception, I started fight back an increasingly strong surge of fear. It almost overpowered me near the top (you know, mild panic episode.) But as soon as we started down, the fear just melted away. In the full moon light, the landscape glowed silver and blue. My friends' ski tracks carved dark shadows into a blank slate of snow, and I followed their turns like a child tracing a curving line - not perfect by any means; not even pretty. But the flow was there, and with it I found peace and satisfaction.

We returned at about 8:30, after a 12-hour day that included more than nine hours of downhill skiing and ski touring, all of it new to my brain and muscles, full of the stress and tension and fear of a novice. I'm deeply tired. My knees are sore. My hip flexors feel like a rubber band caught in a stretched-out position.

And I can understand why people love skiing.

School is in session

I have been saying since July that this year, instead of training for a crazy difficult Iditarod cycling race, I wanted to spend the winter learning more about the ins and outs of winter backcountry travel - that is, beyond the established snowmobile and ski routes where I've ridden my bicycle and hiked in years past. It's not that I've all of the sudden become crazy about skiing - if anything, it's just the opposite. I'm starting to realize more and more that sliding down mountains (yes, even through sweet powder stashes) doesn't really thrill me all that much. I'm perfectly happy to put aside my mediocre snowboard skills to clomp into tougher, less accessible terrain with snowshoes and crampons, with which I have more control and maneuverability. Just like I am at my core as a cyclist, I am an unapologetic tourist. I am all about the traveling aspect of outdoor recreation. My turn-ons are exploration, distance, and mule-like physical labor. In other words, I'm an endorphin junkie; I have little use for adrenaline.

But I recognize that skiing is still the most efficient way to travel through the backcountry, both up and down, so I'm willing to give it a try. I'm horrible at being a beginner. I want to do things NOW and I want to go where I want to go, so I've avoided learning how to ski. But that's partly what my Banff trip is about. Learning new things.

Today, my first day in Banff, was not a ski day. I have two good friends here who are patient and understanding and willing to teach me the way I want to be taught. So instead of dragging me up bunny slopes at the ski hill (there will be some of that this week, but only some), they are taking me to more enjoyable, nontechnical places in the backcountry. And before we do any backcountry skiing, I have to learn backcountry safety. So today (which was a spectacular, beautiful, minus-10-Celsius day), my friend Keith and I went snowshoeing and he taught me the basics about scoping out avalanche danger.

We hiked up Observation Mountain, and I was thrilled that my sea-level lungs felt fine at 8,000 feet elevation. We made a quick trip up to the ridge, and because it was so comfortable out, spent a while up high gazing across the valley and picking out different avalanche scenarios and safety zones. Keith even gave me pop quizzes. I think I passed. Keith happens to be an avid skier and continued to emphasize that he must "really love" me, because the skiing conditions were ideal and he was stuck on snowshoes.

We stopped and dug a snow pit, conducting different tests so he could help me see the difference between weak and strong layers. Avalanche danger today was quite low for this region. Banff hasn't had a recent big snow or wind event, and many of the area's typical "death zones" were littered with ski tracks.

The bottom 30" (out of about 38" total) was completely solid. Keith said, "You never see this in the Rockies, never."

But you can't beat just being out on a day like today in a place like Banff. That's what I'm about. Keith said he could tell I was in my "happy place."

We took advantage of that nearly full moon to go for a night hike up Telephone Mountain just outside town. I know this isn't a great picture, but keep in mind all I have for a camera is a point-and-shoot - this is how clear and bright it was outside. Great first day on vacation.